goo Research recently conducted an interesting survey, reported on by japan.internet.com, into geiger counters.

Demographics

Over the 24th and 25th of October 2011 1,089 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.5% of the sample were male, 16.9% in their teens, 17.9% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.9% in their fifties, and 11.7% aged sixty or older.

I suppose if I was intellectually bankrupt and just wanted to get hits for this story by getting spread to the more excitable corners of the web, I should have entitled the story something like “Four in five Japanese will DIE of STUBBORNNESS”, and indeed I wouldn’t be too surprised if it gets picked up anyway and repackaged with a similar scary line. Anyway, I believe that geiger counters are actually relatively difficult to use accurately, and for perhaps the biggest source of (mostly unfounded) worry, foodstuffs, they are pretty much useless, but yet I hear that people in Tokyo supermarkets do wave them over the veggie stalls. I wonder how they react to bananas and Brazil nuts?

A measuring device is worse than useless without the knowledge to understand what you measure.

On the other hand, I would very much like one. Just because — for much the same reason I have a home-made temperature logger, random pieces from a decommissioned optical bench, a couple of partial robots, the head of a film enlarger (needs a lightsource and a stand), a self-built (but crappy) camera shutter speed measuring device and lots of other junk.

I want one not because I actually worry about radiation, but because I’m a bit of a geek. I bet I’m far from the only one.